Hi, I’m Steve Dudash at IHT Wealth Management. Welcome to this week’s Wealthcast. So, I want to talk about Hurricane Harvey and how that affects your guys’ situation and really the economy as a whole. So let’s start off with some of the good and then we’ll funnel through because obviously this is a terrible situation. Our hearts and our prayers go out to all the victims and the people affected by it, because millions of people are going to be affected by this for quite some time.

The GDP numbers for our economy came in, they were 3%, which is good- we need it to be more, but it’s good. It’s a head in the right direction. The reality is, this isn’t the start of a trend and it’s probably going to get pulled back. Let’s be honest, Houston is the 4th biggest city in the Country. Huge amount of business rolls through that area, especially Energy business- they are not recovering next week. This isn’t going to be New Orleans where half the people don’t come back. People are coming back, it’s a huge city with a lot of different business enterprises- it’s going to recover. But it’s not going to happen overnight.

So that is going to be a drag on our economy for the next few months? And on top of that, a lot of oil and refineries are in that area of the Country, and with the Hurricane coming back in it’s going to affect them, which means Gas prices are going to go up, which is going to affect a lot of other businesses across the Country. Which is why our 3% GDP number is just not going to happen again next quarter.

That being said, there are some good things that will come out of this. One- Houston is a huge, wonderful city. Lots of money is going to flood in there to rebuild, to clean up. There’s probably going to be a lot of fixes that happen, repairs that wouldn’t have happened otherwise that will ultimately make them an even bigger and better and stronger city, and area of the Country. It’s just going to take a little while. But it will end up being a good thing, they will recover from this.

That being said, all donations are helpful. We made a donation, we’re putting on here a couple sites of different areas that you can donate to as well. Everything adds up, and helps. It really does. And I want to specifically point out one person in particular- JJ Watt who’s a football player for the Houston Texans down in that area. He built a Crowd-funding site that basically for, for charitable donations for the Hurricane- and their like over 10 million dollars now. And for him to put this together, in such a short period of time- 10 million dollars is a lot of money, especially when it’s all, for the most part, smaller donations. It’s just wonderful.

So we’re going to put some links on here, if you get a chance to make some donations- I know they can use it. But long term, well short term it’s going to be rough and it will hurt our Economy and it will hurt various areas of the Market. Long term though, we will recover, we will get through this, this will be something that will ultimately be fixed and be stronger because of it. Thanks for having me talk this week. I hope next week is more uplifting. Have a nice weekend. Take care.

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